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Museum of Ancient Life

We went to the Museum of Ancient Life this weekend and it is probably the awesomest museum I’ve ever been too. It’s the world’s largest dinosaur exhibit so we were bound to like it, but there was also SO much to do! This post is photo heavy, so if you don’t like pictures of A) my kids (in which case, why are you here?) B) fossils, or C) giant sharks, this maybe isn’t the post for you.

There were lots of exhibits for touching, all marked nicely with a little hand. This one was a prehistoric tide pool.

Fossils of giant fish. The kids were too busy looking around at everything to actually look at me for pictures.

This museum has the largest collection of original fossils in the state of Utah. Makes me wonder who has more in another state, because there were a LOT here. (Unrelated: as you can see in this picture I left my hair down and straightened and really liked it, but I realized how little I actually do that anymore because there’s just so much of it. I’m gonna cut it.)

A crawl through tunnel that the kids explored. (With an iphone flashlight, of course.)

Design your own dinosaur! I think Kalena thought it was a puzzle, not a make-up-your-own type thing. She still enjoyed it.

One of Will’s favorites: two T-Rex skeletons ready to fight!

The kids playing the giant erosion table. Sand and water, all set up so the water actually runs from one point around the table so you can watch it erode the sand. (If you left the sand alone long enough, which obviously the kids did not.)

It was seriously giant. The whole thing is sort of a loop, but there’s a section where you can crawl under and then in the inside part of the loop the floor is higher so littler kids can reach. This place thought of everything. Also I really wanted to play in there. I resisted.

Riding a protoceratops!

Fossilized giant sea turtle, Archelon. We have dinosaur flashcards and one of them is an archelon, but I never realized they were huge like this. I guess that’s what I get for not reading anything more than the name.

And kids terrified of the giant shark. We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

There was ALSO a 3D dinosaur movie that was pretty awesome. We spent about 3 hours there, but we could easily have spent all day. In fact, we had to skip the (also huge) digging quarry at the very end because it had gotten so late. So much fun.

4 thoughts on “Museum of Ancient Life”

Patrick would pretty much die for the design-a-dino; he designs his own dinosaurs in drawings and play-doh for now. I say “oh, cool, I like that,” and he says “why do you like that?” Like he’s trying to trip me up or something. Also I think he would have died to be in the most awesome place in the world, with his most awesome cousin-friend ever.